For four days we stayed on our side of the river, watching the Hessians on the far shore. When we had crossed we took every boat on a seventy mile stretch of the Delaware, and brought them over to our side. Then the orders came for us to march.

Only one man in ten remained from those that had fought with us in that August on Long Island. Death, disease, and desertion had taken their toll. We marched. And I tell you, as God’s honest truth, we had nothing to eat on that march save what we could find in forest or field ourselves. If you’ve never had a soup of pine needles, to try to sustain you on a long days march, or chewed on a strip of bark to stop the gnawing hunger in your belly, then you cannot imagine our suffering.

For most of the militias, their terms would be up on new years day. And many was the man who had seen his fill of this war. Each morning there were fewer men than had been there the night before.

On the 21st we entered camp. At a place called Newtown, just south west of McConkeys Ferry.